Free Warned Off by Joe Mcnally, Richard Pitman Page A

with me and slid Harle onto a stretcher, grimacing
as they did so. They covered him with a blanket and hurried inside.
    The triage nurse wanted particulars. I
told her his name was Jim Malloy and that he was my brother, a heroin addict
who’d been taking treatment at home but had disappeared two weeks ago. I said
I’d been searching for him and had just found him in a filthy squat, deserted
by his friends.
    She gave me sympathetic looks and said
they’d do their best for him, but they’d have to inform the police of his
condition. I told her to save herself a call as I was going to the police
station next to update them having originally reported him missing. She
believed me.
    I promised to visit him next day, and I
assured the nurse I would bathe and change, as she suggested, as soon as I got
home. Which was exactly what I did.
    I stood on the bathroom floor letting
the sodden clothes slide from my body. Then I stepped out of the dirty soaking
pile and lowered myself into the hot water. Beautiful. I wished immediately I’d
poured a drink and brought it with me.
    Promising myself a double when I got
out, I lay back to think things through.
    I had no doubt the thugs who’d maimed
Bergmark and Rask were responsible for Harle’s abduction and subsequent
treatment. Did that mean the trainer, Roscoe, was implicated? At the start he’d
claimed Harle was ill, then said he’d walked out. Harle’s disappearance could
have been looked on by Roscoe as voluntary but I had a feeling the trainer knew
all about it.
    If so did he know what Harle had been
involved in before they’d caught up with him?
    And what the hell was Harle
involved in? The whole Perlman-Roscoe-Harle thing stunk of something illegal and
with Skinner the vet involved it looked odds-on to be horse-doping. But where
did the heroin come in? Was it just a personal habit of Harle’s? Was he dealing
in it?
    Who had abducted him, Kruger’s men? The
same two he’d been seen talking to? The ones who’d visited Rask, Bergmark and
Danny Gordon? If I could tie Kruger into it more solidly it seemed certain I
was on the trail of the people we wanted.
    So where did I go next? Where did
Kruger’s men go next? Could Roscoe help me track them down or should I put my
name about as the one who rescued Harle and let them come straight for me?
    I felt distinctly cool about that even
in the warm water. These were imaginative guys, not your straightforward hit
men. They liked a bit of variety in their work: cut-throats, pulped ankles,
chained-up jockeys I wondered what page of their cookery book I’d turn up on.
    The prospect of being the fox to their
hounds didn’t enthral me but it didn’t petrify me either. They’d had the
advantage of surprise over their past victims but I would know they were coming
for me. I was also angry that those two could go around maiming and killing
without fear of retribution. They were due back a little of what they’d been
dishing out.
    I decided to let them know through the
grapevine what I’d done and take my chances when they came looking. A visit to
Roscoe’s still might prove fruitful though, especially if I called when he
wasn’t at home. I would have to plan it.
    But firstly, I decided, a chat with
Danny Gordon’s widow might throw up something. I’d go and see her next morning.
     
    I
called the hospital before leaving for Newmarket and learned Harle had suffered
“a restless night”. Not half as restless as his previous three or four, I’d
bet. I rang McCarthy and told him about Harle and my planned visit to see Mrs
Gordon.
    ‘Did the hospital contact the police?’
    ‘I asked them not to.’ I said.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because, well, they’ll drag things out
for months or years. Look at Danny Gordon’s death, are they any further along
with that?’
    ‘It’s only been three months, Eddie’
    ‘I’ll tell Mrs Gordon that, shall I?’
    He sighed, ‘Look, the less the police
get involved, the better for us too. We don’t